We signed up for this event at the urging of my wife, who wanted to sign up at the urging of her friend, who wanted to sign up at the urging of her husband. Said husband is a Kansas National Guardsman and wanted to run this race (which is sponsored by the National Guard) so that he could qualify to be apart of their National marathon team. He also wanted to qualify for Boston as well. I had no interest in doing the marathon but gladly signed up for the half. It's also hard to turn down the opportunity to race in my old college town, which I don't get to visit as much.

We spent Saturday walking around downtown, getting lunch, and doing the packet pick-up thing. Then we headed towards the Haymarket district later for dinner. I used to work at a restaurant here (Lazlos) in college and boy has this area changed in the last year or so. All prompted by the building of the new basketball arena, et al. Lots of restaurants and bars, of which had great outdoor seating, and it would've been an excellent evening to sit outside and drink the night away, but alas we were in town for other reasons. So we headed back to our hotel rooms to get off of our feet and rest.

Event warmup:

Up at 10 til 5:00. Breakfast, then walk to the starting area. Stood in line for the bathrooms and then got ourselves positioned with less than five minutes to go. Perfect.

Run

1h 27m 49s

13.1 miles

06m 42s min/mile

Comments:

Jason, the fella looking to BQ and National Gaurd team qualify, asked what time I was hoping for. Considering how I've felt on my long runs and that I was training through this event I said anything below 1:30 would be great (roughly two min off PR). He was hoping for a 3:00-3:05 marathon time and suggested we run together. That was OK with me, but I wasn't sure how long that would last considering he is a bit faster than me (considerably on shorter distances).

My legs felt fine for the first half of the run but the entire time my heart rate was elevated higher than I thought it should be, especially for the first opening miles. The first mile was at a 6:53 split and that felt kinda hard. So doubt started to creep into my mind as to whether I was going to be able to hold my pace and have a successful race. But Jason, who is also a high school cross country coach, kept encouraging me and talking about how he was happy with the pace we were moving at. In my mind I kept saying "that's wonderful but I don't know how long I can hang on to this pace." But hang on was what I was going to do until something kept me from doing otherwise.

I was doing some serious work, Jason seemed like he was out for a nice easy run, talking me up. I had tunnel vision, really only focusing on the few other runners ahead of me and keeping Jason just off of my hip. He must have noticed my breathing because he threw out some of his coaching advice and had me focus on controlled breaths. Despite all of this we were putting up good splits, getting faster in fact. We also kept picking out people ahead of us and slowly reeling them in.

After the mile 7 mark we were coming up on a drink station and I told Jason I was going to walk it so that I could take in a scheduled GU. He wished me luck and surged on ahead without me. However, the stop was on the narrowish trail, with volunteers on both sides. I was concerned with stopping right in front of someone and knocking them over, so I just slowed to an 8:30 pace and tried to stay in the center of the path. Mile 8 had a bitch of a hill to go up and by mile 9 my legs were really starting to feel fatigued. Both miles produced 6:45 splits and I thought things might be starting to go down hill, but I rebounded for miles 10 and 11 with 6:39 splits. The final two miles flat out hurt; just pushing as much as I could muster out of my legs. One foot in front of the other as fast as I could.

It was super, super awesome to finish at the 50 yard line of Memorial Stadium. As a big Husker fan who never gets the opportunity to go to Lincoln for games anymore I was geeking out a bit about this. Great finish. Great day. And a new PR.

Walked around the field and under the stadium to cool down. Waited for my wife, her friend, and ultimately Jason (who did BQ with a 3:00 time) to finish. It was an hour and half of waiting around, but that was cool with me. Snapped lots of pics on my phone to share with my Husker family.

I've got to give credit to Jason for pushing my pace during the first half of the race. I likely would've backed off my pace early on but he kept me going. Never would have PR'd otherwise.

Great race. Well supported. People cheering you on the ENTIRE course. The community really comes out and supports this race. The four of us who did this race all agreed we would gladly come back and do this race again.

Last updated: 2014-01-01 12:00 AM

Running

01:27:49
|
13.1 miles |
06m 42s min/mile

Age Group:

19/612

Overall:

87/8876

Performance:

Good

See Below

Course:

Singular loop with miles 6-9 on a paved trail. Primarily flat. Slow climb from miles 2.5 to 5. Hill at mile 8.